Film Review: The Most Dangerous Game (dir by Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On a jungle island Count Zaroff awaits.

Zaroff is a Russian nobleman and a hunting enthusiast. However, he’s grown bored with hunting the usual big game trophies. Those don’t provide enough of a challenge for him. Instead, he prefers to hunt humans because humans are the most dangerous game. Humans can think. Humans are clever. Humans are deadly. When big game hunter Bob Rainsford washes up on the island after a shipwreck, he is discovered by Zaroff’s men. Rainsford discovers that Zaroff is a fan of his work. Rainsford also learns that Zaroff is planning to hunt him next.

It’s a tale that we’ve all heard, in one form or another. Ever since Richard Connell’s original short story was published in 1924, The Most Dangerous Game has inspired a countless number of adaptations. Some of those have been direct adaptations while others have merely been inspired by Connell’s plot but, in the end, they all have the same thing in common. No animal is more dangerous than man.

As far as my research has revealed, the very first cinematic adaptation of The Most Dangerous Game came out in 1932. It was produced by Ernest Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper, the same team that would later be responsible for the original King Kong. Joel McCrea played Rainsford while Zaroff is played by Leslie Banks. In order to provide some romance and perhaps to pad out the film to over an hour, a few extra shipwreck survivors are added. There’s two sailors who don’t last long. There’s also Eve Trowbridge and her brother, Martin. Eve and Martin are played by Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong, both of whom would star in King Kong. Zaroff’s imposing servant, Ivan, is played by Noble Johnson who also appeared in King Kong. Are you picking up on a theme here?’

Other than the addition of the extra characters, this film version is pretty faithful to its source material. Again, we have Zaroff “rescuing” Rainsford and then having a long philosophical discussion with him before announcing that it is Rainsford who will be hunted. Unsurprisingly, the film’s Rainsford is a bit more heroic than the one who appears in the short story. The literary Rainsford looks forward to defeating Zaroff at his own game while the film’s Rainsford is more concerned with getting off the island and protecting Eve.

All in all, it’s an entertaining film. Of course, by today’s standards, it’s a bit creaky. I mean, the film is 88 year old. Still, Joel McCrea remains a convincing and compelling hero while Leslie Banks is enjoyably hammy in the role of Zaroff. Zaroff is a role that calls for an actor who is willing to give into his most theatrical impulses and Banks doesn’t let the film down. The jungle scenery is properly shadowy and even the miniatures used during the shipwreck sequence have a charm all their own.

Unfortunately, The Most Dangerous Game is one of those films that has slipped into the public domain. As a result, there’s a lot of less-than perfect versions floating around. (The version that I recently watched on YouTube was so grainy that it was nearly unwatchable.) Fortunately, this film is a part of the Criterion Collection. That’s the one to add to your collection.

Horror on the Lens: Dante’s Inferno (dir by Henry Otto)

Posted on October 19, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror on the lens comes to us from 1924! In Dante’s Inferno, a businessman visualizes Dante’s trip to Hell while little realizing that his behavior is going to lead him to the same destination.

There’s a lot different prints of this film floating around. The original version ran for 60 minutes. The version below was a 49-minute version that was released on VHS. At the time of its release, it’s vision of Hell was considered to be so frightening and definitive that clips of this film were actually used in other films that depict Hell. In fact, Ken Russell used clips from this film in 1980 to depict a drug-induced hallucination in the film, Altered States.

The quality of the upload is not the best (again, largely because it was taken from an old VHS tape) and it’s impossible not to cringe at the character of the butler (whose portrayal, sadly, is typical of how African-Americans were regularly portrayed in films up until the 1960s) but this is still a bit of cinematic history.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Lost Horizon (dir by Frank Capra)

Posted on March 4, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Long before there was Lost, there was Lost Horizon!

Much like the famous television show, the 1937 film Lost Horizon begins with a group of strangers on an airplane. They’re people from all walks of life, all with their separate hopes and dreams. When the plane crashes, they find themselves stranded in an uncharted land and, much like the Lost castaways, they are shocked to discover that they are not alone. Instead, they’ve found a semi-legendary place that is ruled over by a man who has lived for centuries. Much as in Lost, some want to return to civilization while others want to remain in their new home. Both Lost and Lost Horizon even feature a terminally ill woman who starts to recover her health after becoming stranded.

Of course, in Lost, everyone was just flying from Australia to America. In Lost Horizon, everyone is trying to escape the Chinese revolution. Among the passengers on the plane: diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), his irresponsible brother, George (John Howard), a con artist named Henry (Thomas Mitchell), a paleontologist (Edward Everett Horton), and the very ill Gloria (Isabel Jewell).

While Lost featured a plane crash on a tropical island, Lost Horizon features a plane crash in the Himalayas. In Lost, the sinister Others sent spies to infiltrate the survivors. In Lost Horizon, the mysterious Chang (H.B. Warner) appears and leads the survivors to a place called Shangri-La.

Shangi-La is a lush and idyllic valley that has somehow flourished in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. The happy inhabitants inform the survivors that they never get sick and they never fight. They’re led by the High Lama (Sam Jaffe), a philosopher who explains that he is several hundred years old. The valley is full of magic and the Lama tells the survivors that Shangri-La is their new home.

Now, I’ve seen enough horror movies that I spent most of Lost Horizon waiting for the Lama to suddenly reveal that he was a vampire or an alien or something. Whenever anyone in a movie seems to be too good to be true, that usually means that he’s going to end up killing someone about an hour into the story. But that didn’t happen in Lost Horizon. Instead, the Lama is just as wise and benevolent as he claims to be and Shangri-La is as much of a paradise as everyone assumes. I guess we’re just naturally more cynical in 2018 than people were in 1937.

Of course, the Lama isn’t immortal. Not even the magic of Shangri-La can prevent the inevitably of death. The Lama is looking for a successor. Could one of the survivors be that successor? Perhaps. For instance, Robert absolutely loves Shangri-La. Of course, his brother George is determined to return to the real world. He has fallen in love with one of the inhabitants of Shagri-La and plans to take her with him, despite the Lama’s warning about trying to leave…

Frank Capra was a huge fan of James Hilton’s book, Lost Horizon, and he spent three years trying to bring it to the big screen. Based on Capra’s previous box office successes, Colombia’s Harry Cohn gave Capra a budget of $1.25 million to bring his vision of Shangri-La to life. That may not sound like much today but, at the time, that made Lost Horizon the most expensive movie ever made. The production was a notoriously difficult one. (The original actor cast as the elderly Lama was so excited to learn he had been selected that he dropped dead of a heart attack.) As a result of both its ornate sets and Capra’s perfectionism, the film soon went overbudget. When Capra finally delivered a first cut, it was over 6 hours long. Capra eventually managed to edit it down to 210 minutes, just to then have Harry Cohn order another hour taken out of the film. When Lost Horizon was finally released, it had a running time of 132 minutes.

Seen today, Lost Horizon is definitely an uneven work. With all the cutting and editing that went on, it’s hard to guess what Capra’s original vision may have been but, in the final version, much more time is devoted to the characters discussing the philosophy of Shangri-La than to the characters themselves. (It’s always good to see Thomas Mitchell but he really doesn’t get much to do.) Since you never really feel like you know what any of these characters were like outside of Shangi-La, it’s hard to see how being in Shagri-La has changed them. You just have to take their word for it. That said, it’s a visually stunning film. Capra may have gone over budget creating the look of Shangri-La but it was money well-spent. If I ever find myself in a magic village, I hope it looks half as nice as the one in Lost Horizon.

Despite all of the drama that went on behind the scenes and a rather anemic box office reception, Lost Horizon was nominated for best picture. However, it lost to The Life of Emile Zola.

Horror Film Review: The Mummy (dir by Karl Freund)

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Did H.P. Lovecraft enjoy movies? I’d love to think that he did but in all probability, he didn’t. After all, Lovecraft frequently wrote, in both his fiction and his personal correspondence, that he found the modern world to be “decadent.” He was not a fan of technological development, viewing it as being the source of civilization’s decline.

In all probability, Lovecraft did not enjoy the movies. When The Mummy was first released in 1932, it’s probable that Lovecraft did not rush out to a local Providence movie theater and buy a ticket.

And, really, that’s a shame. Of the many horror films released by Universal Pictures in the 1930s, The Mummy was perhaps the most Lovecraftian. The bare bones of the film’s plot could have easily been lifted from one of Lovecraft’s stories: a group of rational and educated men are confronted with an ancient evil that defies all reason. When the title character is brought back to life by a man foolishly reading from the fictional Scroll of Thoth, one is reminded of not only the Necronomicon but also of the dozens of other fictional-but-plausible texts that have appeared in the works of both Lovecraft and his successors. Just the sight of the Mummy coming back to life causes one man to have an immediate nervous breakdown, a fate shared by almost every Lovecraft protagonist who was unfortunate enough to learn about Cthulhu, Azathoth, and the truth concerning man’s insignificant place in the universe.

The story of The Mummy goes something like this: In ancient Egypt, a priest is caught trying to bring his dead lover back to life and, as punishment, he is mummified alive and locked away in a tomb. Centuries later, a group of explorers discover the tomb. The mummy comes back to life and, ten years later, he abducts the woman (played by the very beautiful Zita Johann) whom he believes to be the reincarnation of his former love.

I’ve watched The Mummy a few times and one thing that always surprises me is how little we actually see of the Mummy as a mummy. After he’s accidentally resurrected by Ralph Norton (Bramwell Fletcher), the Mummy steps out of his sarcophagus and stumbles out into the streets of Cairo, leaving a now insane Norton to giggle incoherently about how the mummy just stepped outside for a walk. That is pretty much the last time that we ever see the Mummy wrapped up in bandages. When we next see the Mummy, he’s going by the name Ardath Bey and he bears a distinct resemblance to Boris Karloff.

Karloff gives one of his best performance as the sinister and calculating Bey. Of all the horror films that were released by Universal in the 1930s, The Mummy is perhaps the only one that can still be considered to be, at the very least, disturbing. That’s largely due to the fact that, as played by Karloff, Bey is the epitome of pitiless and relentless evil. I’m always especially shaken by the scene in which Bey uses his magical powers to make a man miles away die of a heart attack. It’s not just the fact that Bey has the power to do something like this. It’s that Bey seems to get so much enjoyment out of it. There’s a sadistic gleam in Karloff’s eyes during these scenes and his expression of grim satisfaction is pure nightmare fuel.

Just compare Bey to the other Universal monsters: The Invisible Man was driven insane by an unforeseen side effect of his formula. Frankenstein’s Monster was destructive because he didn’t know any better. The Wolf Man spent five movies begging people to kill him and put him out of his misery. And while Dracula was certainly evil, he had as many limitations as he had power. He couldn’t go out in daylight. He was easily repelled by both crosses and garlic. He often didn’t do a very good job of hiding his coffin. Ardath Bey, on the other hand, was not only evil but apparently unstoppable as well.

The rest of the cast is pretty much overshadowed by Karloff but fans of the old Universal horror movies will enjoy picking out familiar faces. They’ll recognize David Manners from Dracula. Edward Van Sloan also shows up here, fresh from playing Van Helsing in Dracula and Dr. Waldman in Frankenstein. But ultimately, it is Karloff who dominates the film and that’s the way it should be. There’s a reason why Boris Karloff could get away with only his last name appearing in the credits. He was an icon of both cinema and horror and The Mummy reminds us why.

For a film that was first released 84 years ago, The Mummy holds up surprisingly well. There have been countless movies about homicidal mummies over the years but none have yet to match the original.

The Fabulous Forties #9: Jungle Book (dir by Zoltan Korda)

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 9th film in Mill Creek’s Fabulous Forties DVD box set was 1942’s Jungle Book. Based on the novel by Rudyard Kipling (which was later made into an animated Disney film and of which a remake is scheduled to be released next week), Jungle Book was directed by Zoltan Korda and produced by Zoltan’s brother, Alexander. Today, the Hungarian-born Korda Brothers are best remembered as being pioneers of the British film industry. However, during World War II, they relocated their film making to the United States. Jungle Book was one of the most critically and commercially successful of their American films.

Jungle Book opens in colonial India. An elderly Indian storyteller is visited by a British woman (Faith Brook) who wants to hear a story from his youth. The rest of the film plays out in flashback, a structure that allows Jungle Book to walk a thin line between reality and fantasy. Is the storyteller telling the exact truth or is he exaggerating his tale? That’s left up to the viewer to decide. Personally, I chose to believe that he’s telling the exact truth. It’s more magical that way.

The storyteller starts by telling the woman about the Indian jungle and the animals that live within it. Some of the animals are kind and some of them are cruel but they all serve a purpose. The most feared of the animals is a tiger named Shere Kahn. When a baby disappears from a nearby village, the villagers assume that he, like his father, was killed by Shere Kahn. What they do not know is that the baby actually wandered into the jungle and was raised by wolves.

The baby grows up to be Mowgli (Sabu), a feral young man who can talk to the animals. When Mowgli is captured by the villagers, he is unknowing adopted by his real mother, Mesusa (Rosemary DeCamp). At first, the wild Mowgli struggles to adapt to human ways and one of the villagers, Buldeo (Joseph Calleia), insists that Mowgli has “the evil eye.”

As Mowgli becomes a little more civilized (though he’s never exactly tamed), he starts to fall in love with a Mahala (Patricia O’Rourke). Unfortunately, Mahala is the daughter of Buldeo and Buldeo is none to happy when Mowgli and Mahala start to spend all of their time exploring the jungle together. However, that’s before Mowgli and Mahala come across a lost palace that is full of treasure. When the greedy Buldeo finds out about the treasure, he demands that Mowgli tell him where the palace is. Driven mad by Mowgli’s refusal to tell him, Buldeo goes to more and more extreme measures to find the treasure…

Jungle Book is a big epic film, one that proudly announces that it was shot in Technicolor. The sets are big, the live animal footage (as opposed to the stock footage usually used in films like this) is impressive, and it’s just a fun movie to watch. (Even though I was watching a typically cheap Mill Creek transfer, I was still impressed with the films visuals.) Indian actor Sabu makes for a charismatic Sabu but the film’s best performance comes from Joseph Calleia, who brings unexpected depth to his villainous character.

(Movie lovers, like you and me, probably best know Joseph Calleia as Orson Welles’s tragic partner in Touch of Evil.)

You can watch the original Jungle Book below!

(Jungle Book is in the public domain so, if the video above gets taken down — as often seems to happen with embedded YouTube videos — I would suggest just going to YouTube and doing a search for Jungle Book 1942. You’ll find hundreds of other uploads. I picked the one above because it did not appear to have any commercials.)